modernist urban planning

When and why did modernist urban planning emerge?

It emerged in the late 19th century in response to rapidly growing, chaotic, and polluted cities in Western Europe due to the Industrial Revolution.

What two main sets of factors influenced the emergence of modernist planning?

Technical factors and ideological factors.

How were technical factors important in early modernist planning?

Planning and health officials collaborated to contain diseases like cholera, linking planning to public health and sanitation, influenced by the English sanitary movement of the 1840s.

What role did urban planners play in improving health during the 19th century?

Urban planners, often civil engineers and health professionals, designed schemes to improve sanitation in residential and work areas and separated infected populations from others.

How did ideological factors shape planning?

Planning was used as a tool to achieve political and ideological goals, such as maintaining property values and excluding lower-income residents, ethnic minorities, and traders from certain areas.

What is the relationship between technical and ideological factors in urban planning?

They collectively produced urban ‘visions’ that shaped the objectives and forms of planning, influencing its resilience throughout the 20th century.

What are the three essential components that characterized 20th-century planning?

1. Physical planning and design of settlements by experts 2. Production of master plans or blueprint plans showing the ideal city 3. Planning as a normative task driven by values reflecting the ‘public good’.

How was planning perceived in the 20th century?

As a technical activity carried out by trained experts, not involving politicians or communities, and focused on the physical design of human settlements.

What is a master plan in urban planning?

A detailed plan or blueprint showing the built form of a city at its ideal end-state.

What does it mean that planning was a "normative task"?

It was driven by a particular set of values describing the ideal living environment and reflecting the planners' views of the public good.

What is the Garden City and who developed it?

The Garden City was developed by Ebenezer Howard as an attempt to recreate village life by bringing green spaces into towns and controlling their size and growth.

What were the main objectives of the Garden City movement?

a) Social: preserve traditional, essentially anti-urban ways of life; b) Aesthetic: bring the beauty of the countryside into towns.

Describe the design of a Garden City according to Howard.

A small town (about 30,000 people) outside commuter range of the old city, surrounded by a large green belt, with 6,000 acres purchased and 5,000 left as green belt.

What was Le Corbusier’s vision for the modernist city?

A neat, ordered, and highly controlled city with slums and mixed-use areas demolished, efficient transport corridors, tower block residences with open spaces, and mono-functional land use zones.

How did Le Corbusian modernism influence urban design?

It inspired skyscraper development and the City Beautiful movement, emphasizing boulevards, promenades, and separation of land uses.

What was Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for the American city?

He proposed ‘Broadacre City,’ a low-density, dispersed city where each home had an acre of land, connected by super-highways, promoting urban dispersion rather than concentration.

What are some other influential pioneer planners mentioned?

Sir Raymond Unwin, Barry Parker, Clarence Perry, Clarence Stein, Sir Alker Tripp, Sir Patrick Geddes, Patrick Abercrombie, Soria y Mata, Tony Garnier, and Ernst May.

What were the key assumptions underlying master planning?

1. Planners have special design expertise; others implement the design. 2. Planners are custodians of the ‘public good’. 3. Physical space design can shape society. 4. Plans should be comprehensive. 5. Population and economic growth can be predicted. 6. Cities can be manipulated through plans. 7. An ideal city state can be achieved through planning.

What is the ‘neighbourhood unit’ planning model an example of?

The assumption that designing physical space can create social communities.

What is the relationship between master plans and development control systems (zoning)?

The master plan is the creative vision for the city, while the zoning scheme is the primary legal tool for implementing that vision.

How does the UK approach development control and zoning?

Development rights are nationalized; local plans indicate future land use but do not confer automatic rights, giving planners discretionary power over development applications.

Where did the concept of land-use zoning originate and how was it adopted?

It originated in the USA, was declared a general police power in 1926, and was widely adopted in the US and Europe in the early 20th century.

What was the significance of the 1932 Town and Country Planning Act in the UK?

It advanced master planning and development control, providing a model for colonial planning and influencing European planning.

How did modernist planning concepts spread globally?

They emerged in response to specific regional circumstances in the West but were adopted worldwide throughout the 20th century.